3 Ríos Montt and The New Guatemala

Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala Under General Efrain Rios Montt, 1982-1983
Virginia Garrard-Burnett
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379648.001.0001
Published: 2009 Online ISBN: 9780199869176 Print ISBN: 9780195379648
CHAPTER
3 3 Ríos Montt and the New Guatemala 
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Virginia Garrard‐Burnett
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379648.003.0003 Pages 53–84

Published: December 2009
Abstract
This chapter examines the language, images, and discourses that General Ríos Montt employed to
promote his war of counterinsurgency. While the military’s war of counterinsurgency forcibly paci ed
the largely indigenous highlands (a campaign that some sources claim produced nearly 50 percent of
the civilian deaths that occurred over the course of Guatemala’s thirty‐six‐year armed struggle), Ríos
Montt captivated much of Guatemala’s urban and nonindigenous population through his
anticorruption campaign and his Sunday sermons — weekly broadcast messages that stressed
anticommunism and government loyalty against a backdrop of evangelical language and imagery. This
chapter provides an analysis of the sermons and o ers an attempt to explain and contextualize Ríos
Montt’s political popularity, as he sought to establish order and a fresh ideology for what he called the
New Guatemala. This chapter is based almost exclusively on transcripts of Ríos Montt’s Sunday
sermons and on newspaper clippings from the period.
Keywords: Ríos Montt, Sunday sermon, nationalism, messianism, Pentecostal, evangelical, New
Guatemala, counterinsurgency
Subject: History of Religion, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Religion and Politics
“Himno Nacional de Guatemala” (“Guatemala Feliz”) (Fragment)
…Es tu enseña pedazo de cielo
en que prende una nube su albura,
y ¡ay de aquel que con ciega locura,
sus colores pretenda manchar!
Pues tus hijos valientes y altivos,
que veneran la paz cual presea,
nunca esquivan la ruda pelea

si de enden su tierra y su hogar.
CHORUS :
Libre al viento tu hermosa bandera
a vencer o a morir llamará;
que tu pueblo con ánima era
antes muerto que esclavo sera.…

Nunca esquivan la ruda pelea
si de enden su tierra y su hogar,
que es tan solo el honor su alma idea
y el altar de la Patria su altar…
—José Joaquín Palma wrote and Rafael Álvarez Ovallecomposed Guatemala’s national anthem for a
government‐sponsored contest in 1896. In 1934, General Jorge Ubico ordered José María Bonilla to
rewrite some of the words, which are as they appear here.
On March 23, 1982, a coup led by young military o cers deposed Romeo Lucas García during the last days of
his presidency, announced the nulli cation of the rigged presidential elections that had named General
1
Angel Anibal Guevara to o ce, and put a military junta at the head of government. Golpes and palace coups
were nothing new in Guatemala—no fewer than nine heads of state had been forced to leave o ce without
p. 54 serving out a full term since 1954, the beginning of the modern political era—and this particular coup at
rst appeared to be little more than another chess move in the ongoing internal power struggle among
generals and civilian elites that was then playing out against a backdrop of rapidly disintegrating social,
political, and civic order. Yet it did not take long to see that this was a coup unlike any other. On the evening
of March 23, still dressed in battle fatigues and sporting a lush mustache that drew attention from his
preternaturally bright eyes, the nation’s new leader, General José Efraín Ríos Montt, anked by his two
fellow golpistas, stood before the cameras to address a nervous nation. “I am trusting my Lord and King,
that He shall guide me,” Ríos Montt, a born‐again Pentecostal, proclaimed. “Because only He gives and
2
takes away authority.”
This statement would set the tone for the programs, the criticism, and the retrospective analysis of the
presidency of Efraín Ríos Montt. Born in an aldea of Huehuetenango on June 16, 1926, Ríos Montt was an
3
elder son of a middle‐class family that fell into straitened circumstances during the Depression. His father
was a shopkeeper who owned a store called La Comodidad until the economic crisis of the 1930s bankrupted
the business. His mother, a homemaker, was the descendent of a French immigrant to Guatemala, thus
contributing the unconventional surname Montt to the family. The Ríos Montt family produced twelve
4
children, of whom Efraín, after the death of an older brother, was the eldest son. Though not wealthy, the
family was highly respected in Huehuetenango (they moved to the city proper after the loss of La
Comodidad), and the parents tried to instill in their many children a strong sense of duty and personal
5
discipline. Two of the Ríos sons would go on to distinguish themselves in the two professions that were
open at that time to ambitious young men who were not part of the aristocratic planter class—the military
6
and the Church.
As a determined young man from the provinces, Efraín Ríos Montt joined the army at age sixteen. He
distinguished himself su ciently to earn admission to the Escuela Politécnica in Guatemala City in 1943,
thus gaining him access to a potential life of privilege and power as a military o cer. After he graduated
from the Escuela Politécnica at age twenty‐three, his military career advanced steadily and he moved into
the top ranks while still in his early forties. He taught at the Escuela Politécnica and served for a time as its
director.
Like so many of his military colleagues who went on to oversee the luchas sin cuartel ( ghts without quarter)
in Central America during the nal years of the Cold War, Ríos Montt spent time at a U.S.‐sponsored war
college. Like other members of the army high command—including six of the nine cabinet members who
p. 55 later served under him when he was head of state—Ríos Montt graduated from the U.S.‐run o cer
7
training institute that would eventually be known as the School of the Americas. He studied brie y at the
American post Fort Gulick, in the Canal Zone (1950), where he took a course on counterinsurgency based on

Mao’s movement, rather than on the tactics of Ché Guevara (the Cuban revolution not yet having taken
place), a factor that may well have in uenced his prosecution of the scorched‐earth campaign in 1982. He
later studied at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he received special training in counterinsurgency tactics
8
and irregular warfare in 1961, and then at the Italian War College (1961–1962).
Upon his return to Guatemala, Ríos Montt became President Carlos Arana Osorio’s army chief of sta in
1970 and was promoted to general two years later. Although Ríos Montt’s fellow o cers recall his high
moral standards and professionalism even in this early period, he nonetheless demonstrated an early
preference for the mano dura when, on March 27, 1973, as chief of sta , the young general ordered the
9
massacre of a group of campesinos who were involved in a land takeover in Sansirisay, El Progreso. In 1974,
10
the same year that his younger brother Mario Enrique was consecrated a Catholic bishop, Ríos Montt made
his rst foray into politics as the presidential candidate for the Christian Democratic Party at the head of a
11
coalition known as UNO. As we have seen in chapter 2, although Ríos Montt won the popular vote, the
army and conservative leaders nulli ed the election, putting General Kjell Laugerud, thought to be more of a
hard‐liner, into the o ce of the presidency instead. As extreme cynicism toward the fraudulent elections
infuriated and alienated the Guatemalan public, the same sense of betrayal and extremity extended to the
defrauded candidate himself, whose own colleagues and fellow army o cers had engineered his defeat.
Although Ríos Montt might have challenged the outcome, he did not, out of the belief that this might set o
a popular reaction that would provoke a step up in military repression and, worse still from a general’s
12
perspective, stir up problems within the military high command. In the wake of the election, Ríos Montt,
realizing that his military career was seriously compromised, agreed to take a post in “diplomatic exile” in
13
Spain, and in 1977 he voluntarily went on inactive status with the army.
The General Is Born Again
It was in the wake of this defeat that Ríos Montt, by his own account despondent and at loose ends, became a
born‐again Christian and in 1977, the same year he went into semiretirement, joined a Pentecostal church
p. 56 called the Church of the Word. In so doing, Ríos Montt became part of a larger trend that had started in
the 1960s but had accelerated dramatically after the 1976 earthquake, in which Guatemalans had begun
14
converting to Protestantism, speci cally Pentecostalism, in large numbers. The conversion of so many
Guatemalans to Protestantism—by the early 1980s, more than a quarter of the population had joined
Protestant churches—was in itself the result of a complex convergence of political, social, and spiritual
15
factors. Although critics sniped that the post‐earthquake conversion boom owed as much to the faith‐
based agencies’ o ers of plastic sheeting and cans of Spam as it did to religious conviction, the wave of
conversion in fact ran much deeper, re ecting many people’s desire for some sort of spiritual refuge in a
disintegrating political and social milieu. As a convert to Pentecostalism, Ríos Montt, who had been brought
up in a deeply observant Catholic family, mirrored the experience of many thousands of other Guatemalans
who were changing religious a liations in reaction to a deep personal and social crisis.
Ríos Montt converted through contact with lay pastors of the Church of the Word (Iglesia Cristiana Verbo) or
simply Verbo as it was commonly known. Verbo was a mission of a California‐based organization called
Gospel Outreach, itself the product of the “Jesus freak” movement of the early 1970s. Gospel Outreach
originated as an experiment in communal living, but it had evolved over the years into a conservative neo‐
16
Pentecostal church. The denomination was a small one in the United States, but after its arrival in
Guatemala following the earthquake, the church attracted a large following, one of several new
denominations that catered to wealthy people in Guatemala City, to whom its particular variety of
Pentecostalism, which stressed morality and the tangible rewards of right living, particularly appealed.
Although Verbo continued to maintain some U.S. ties, by the early 1980s the denomination had largely
“gone native” in the sense that the bulk of its leadership, funding, and doctrinal focus was Guatemalan,

creating an inverse missionary relationship with the mother church back in California.
According to Verbo biographers, Ríos Montt took to the church teachings and discipline with alacrity, even
accepting the church’s admonition, “humble thyself,” by doing custodial work and teaching in the church’s
primary school. By Verbo’s account of events, the General was acting in this very capacity on the day of the
March 23 coup, when, without his prior knowledge, the alto mando summoned him directly from the school
to lead the golpe de estado . Be that as it may, Ríos Montt’s membership in the church would overshadow his
entire tenure in o ce, in terms of both his policies and the outside world’s perception of the
administration. “We feel a great door has been opened,” said one elder of the Church of the Word on the
afternoon that Ríos Montt assumed o ce. “We don’t understand what is going to happen, but he will be
p. 57 operating with a power that is not like men’s corrupting power. He is going to have an anointing from
17
God.”
One of Ríos Montt’s rst acts as president was to evoke his church’s teachings that “in a multitude of
counselors there is safety” by appointing two fellow parishioners from Verbo to specially created ad hoc
positions as “secretary to the private a airs of the president” and “secretary of the president of the
18
republic.” He referred to these advisors as “my conscience,” thereby setting o alarms within the army
that members of Verbo might co‐opt military in uence. Indeed, it was (supposedly) exactly these concerns
that church advisors enjoyed undue sway over Ríos Montt that led the army high command to eventually
19
oust Ríos Montt in the coup of August 8, 1983.
Background to the Coup of March 23, 1982
These close ties to evangelical interests notwithstanding, Ríos Montt’s political ascent was, as we have seen,
the product of his 1974 presidential bid. In March 1982, the military o cers who supported Ríos Montt in
the coup against the Lucas‐Guevara regime, thinking he would be a malleable gurehead for the army, were
20
for the most part oblivious to their General’s new religious identity. In assessing the coup, U.S. intelligence
also misread the General, thinking him to be a proxy for a dissident faction of the MLN, at best a weak
21
gurehead for a coalition of army and MLN interests.
Both assessments almost immediately proved wrong, for the General was anything but a puppet of the Far
Right. He quickly drew power to himself, rst by dominating the governing junta and then, on June 9, 1982,
by forcing the other two members of the junta to step down so that he could declare himself sole chief of
state. (Ríos Montt never o cially served as president of Guatemala per se, although the press commonly
used the term to describe his position.) More important, from his rst hours in o ce, Ríos Montt framed
his agenda in terms that were utterly alien to Guatemala’s customary political discourse. As a born‐again
Christian, Ríos Montt wanted nothing less than for the nation of Guatemala to be born again as well: from
this emerged the project that Ríos Montt called La Nueva Guatemala (the New Guatemala).
For Ríos Montt, La Nueva Guatemala was both a political‐military project and a program for national
redemption. In it, military aggressiveness rested uncomfortably alongside evangelical notions of moral and
spiritual reformation. As fellow Pentecostal Jorge Serrano Elías, the head of the Council of State under Ríos
Montt and himself president from 1992 to 1993, explained: “Ríos Montt has two [parallel] theories in his
p. 58 mind. First, he is a military man. Second, he is a moral ghter.…It is only in these two separate
22
perspectives that you can understand his government.” In the General’s way of thinking, however, these
two motives con ated neatly: La Nueva Guatemala required a return to security and the defeat of the
guerrillas, but at the same time, the government, so long associated with repression and corruption, had to
23
reestablish its own legitimacy. Certainly, Ríos Montt hoped that his own very public religious identity
would spill over to help create a more credible perception of the government. But the central goal was vastly

more far reaching: to fundamentally rede ne the nature of the Guatemalan state. His New Guatemala would
be grounded in a trinity of essential principles: morality, order and discipline, and national unity; as such,
Ríos Montt’s Guatemala was to be a rea rmation of the republican (read: capitalist, if not necessarily
24
democratic) ideal, framed in the language of evangelical Protestantism.
La Mano Dura and the War of Counterinsurgency
Far from being the gurehead his fellow generals had expected him to be, Ríos Montt quickly seized the
mando (power) for himself by forcing his fellow golpistas to step down and by moving out from under the
authority of the army high command. Within two weeks of the coup that brought him into power, Ríos
Montt set into motion the legal and political apparatus to prosecute the war against the guerrillas and their
supporters, real and suspected, in the capital and in rural areas of the country. Central to this was the
enactment of several executive decrees designed to establish both a pragmatic and legal basis for the
scorched‐earth campaign in the highlands that was soon to follow. The rst of these was Executive Decree 9‐
82, emitted on April 15, 1982. This law prohibited divulging news of political violence in the Guatemalan
media—a measure that provided an e ective news blackout for the Guatemalan populace, particularly in the
capital, and which provided a veneer of plausible deniability against claims of government atrocities.
Shortly thereafter, on June 1, 1982, the military government issued a general political amnesty for enemies
of the regime, a point to which I shall return later.
Claiming Moral High Ground: The Campaign for Hearts and Minds
La Nueva Guatemala
With his own political power rmly in hand for the time being, Ríos Montt set out to undertake a twofold
p. 59 task. The rst of these was the full‐scale military defeat of the guerrillas, an objective that had eluded the
Guatemalan military since the inception of the rst guerrilla movement in the early 1960s. This initial
objective was the sine qua non of his larger goal to reimagine a new Guatemala in which the government and
the governed would coexist peacefully under the benign sovereignty of God. This utopian vision could not
ower until the army had fully vanquished all “subversives” (a designation that, as we shall see, included
not only the guerrillas but all those who did not subscribe to the “national project” in general).
Within days of taking o ce on March 23, Ríos Montt set out the parameters of La Nueva Guatemala in a
series of television speeches broadcast weekly on Sunday nights. These discursos del domingo were popularly
known as “sermons,” and for good reason: the General, usually clad in civilian clothes with a Bible near at
hand, and often standing beside an elaborate candelabrum, addressed his audience on a variety of political,
economic, and social topics meant to establish the framework for a New Guatemala and, indeed, a new
Guatemalan. The discursos, while far from Fidelesque in duration, could last for an hour or more, depending
on the General’s frame of mind and range of vision on a given evening. While many discursos were
predominantly political in nature, most also touched on family life, health, and other edifying topics. The
common link in all the discursos, however, was a religious or moral subtext, solidly embedded in an
25
evangelical narrative framework.
Ríos Montt addressed the nation at least once a week between March 23, 1982, and December 26, 1982. The
government printing o ce published verbatim transcripts of these sermons, and they form the basis for
much of the remainder of this chapter. The discursos were widely watched and discussed, and they appeared
in abridged synopses in Guatemala’s newspapers during Ríos Montt’s rst nine months in o ce. But by

January 1983, newspapers no longer printed the transcripts, perhaps a re ection of the army high
command’s growing dissatisfaction with the General, which would culminate in his ouster in the August
1983 coup.
The time frame of the discursos also corresponds to the bloodiest periods of the Ríos Montt regime. The
CIIDH database on human rights violations documents over 800 killings and disappearances per month
during Ríos Montt’s term of o ce; this is only an average, with killings weighted much more heavily at the
beginning of his term of o ce than at the end. In fact, it was actually during Ríos Montt’s rst 100 days in
o ce that much of the state‐sponsored killing took place ( gure 3.1). During the rst 100 days, human
26
rights organizations detailed evidence of at least sixty‐nine massacres. The killing tapered o in June,
corresponding to a limited government‐sponsored amnesty, and then accelerated again in July, after the
p. 60 amnesty ended and the government declared a “state of war” through the Victoria 82 scorched‐earth
campaign. By October 1982, killings by the security forces decreased dramatically (although massacres
continued to occur on a more sporadic basis for some time to come), indicating the army’s increased
27
satisfaction with its control over the devastated highlands.
Figure 3.1.
Killings and Disappearances in Guatemala, July 1979–April 1984. CEH, Memory of Silence, p. 84.
Despite the unprecedented scope of this assault, its swiftness and precision were a hopeful signal to some
Guatemalans, particularly to those living outside the massacre zones, that the indiscriminate terror that
characterized the preceding Lucas regime had nally come to an end. Even though killing and terror
increased quite dramatically under Ríos Montt, public perception and short‐term hagiography paradoxically
credited the General with providing a cold logic and predictability to state repression. As one rural villager
explained it, “Under Lucas, people were getting killed for no apparent reason. When Ríos Montt took over,
28
you knew what you needed to do to stay alive.”
“La Nueva Guatemala Es Paz y Desarrollo”

Certainly, Ríos Montt’s early actions indicate that he understood that the restoration of a sense of order and
p. 61 security were important to his own legitimacy and authority in the eyes of Guatemala’s urban elites, an
objective that the army high command also shared. To this end, on the night of March 24, 1982, Ríos Montt

appeared on television to call for an end to the random and ubiquitous violence in the capital, demanding
29
that there be “no more cadavers on the roadsides.” The next day, political murder in and around the
capital dropped sharply, as rightist death squads felt the withdrawal of o cial sanction for their activities.
Three days later, the city’s bomberos, Guatemala’s volunteer remen and ad hoc morgue crews, reported
that for the rst time in months they had not picked up any dead bodies in the streets—a grisly morning
task that had become a daily ritual during the Lucas years. So remarkable was this change that the March 27
30
newspaper front‐page headline announced: “No one shot to death today.”
A War of Images
Ríos Montt understood much more clearly than had the preceding Lucas regime that his administration was
engaged in a struggle for control of the country that was as much psychological and ideological as it was
military. To this end, the regime constructed a series of images designed to reorient the struggle in people’s
minds by portraying the government as champion and guardian of law and order. First among these images
was one that is still very strongly associated with Ríos Montt to this day: a blue hand with the thumb, index,
and middle ngers extended against a eld of white ( gure 3.2). These three ngers symbolized a
Trinitarian pledge: “No robo, no miento, no abuso” (I don’t steal, lie, or abuse)—a repentant government’s
promise to recover its legitimacy and authority in the eyes of its people. The colors of the image, white and
“celestial” blue (celeste), of course, are the colors of the Guatemalan ag.
Figure 3.2.

“Ese Gobierno tiene el compromiso de cambiar.” “This government is committed to change. You too fulfill your commitment.
Change.” The three‐finger salute and the pledge of “No robo, no miento, no abuso” (I donʼt steal, I donʼt lie, I donʼt abuse) that
appear here were closely identified with the Ríos Montt regime in the early 1980s. Political advertisement, Prensa Libre, 1982.
The three‐ ngered hand became ubiquitous almost immediately: in urban areas, it appeared in all public
o ces and in full‐page ads in the national newspapers. In rural areas, where the three‐ ngered salute
seemed to o er as much threat as promise, the emblem was also inescapable. It appeared painted on rock,
whitewashed on mountainsides, on posters in rural post o ces and Guatel telephone outstations, and, in
time, on signs posted by the army in newly “paci ed” villages.
A second e ort to make the government’s case appeared in a series of advertisements in Guatemalan
newspapers that sought to reorient the readers’ understanding of who constituted the villains and heroes of
the armed con ict. To this end came a series of ads that freely blended gentle cajoling with untempered
p. 62 demands: “We promise to change. You too.” “This government is committed to change. You too ful ll
your commitment. Change.” Other ads underscored many of the themes of Ríos Montt’s discursos, including
the call for national identity and state formation: “To make the Patria is not a question of heroes; to make
the Patria is a question of discipline.”
Most unambiguous of all was a series of “wanted” posters in which appeared the enlarged cedula photos of
mostly middle‐class young people, usually students, who had joined the armed movement. Below their
picture were lists of their crimes: “Lidia Amparo Santos Chacón has chosen the extremist path of terror and
violence without concern for the consequences,” charged one such ad ( gure 3.3). “[She has become] an
instrument of interests that are far from the authentic destiny of our country.…Denounce her.…To maintain
p. 63 the peace is also your concern.” In other ads ran photographs of plump, smiling Ixil children, happy
wards of the state: such shots o ered a visual refutation to the news photos that ran in the same
newspapers of gaunt and haunted‐looking women and children who had recently surrendered to be
repatriated to the model villages. Through such visual and rhetorical devices, the Ríos Montt government
sought to build the kind of consensus it needed to reassert the government’s ideological control.

Figure 3.3.
Government‐sponsored newspaper ad accusing a university student of membership in the Organización del Pueblo en Armas
(ORPA). The text reads: “Lidia Amparo Santos Chacón has chosen the extremist path of terror and violence without concern for
the consequences, becoming an instrument of interests that are far from the authentic destiny of our country.” The final line
reads: “Denounce her.…To maintain peace is also your concern.” El Gráfico, December 12, 1982.
Such visual messages, combined with the dramatic decrease in urban crime and political killings, did much
to reassure the power brokers of Guatemala City and, indeed, the urban population in general, that this was
a government at last capable of restoring law and order to the country and representing their interests.
Within the city, the three‐ ngered salute became a signi er of order and stability, the visual and somatic
representation of the New Guatemala. For much of rural Guatemala, however—especially the areas outside
p. 64 the reach of newspaper ads—the implications of Ríos Montt’s ability to invert the language of struggle
would carry a very di erent signi cance.
A War of Language
A strong current of public morality and evangelical rhetoric ran deeply through Ríos Montt’s imaginaire of a
31
New Guatemala. In the early 1980s, both internal and external perceptions enhanced Ríos Montt’s image
as an evangelical caudillo (strongman)—from the conservative evangelical view that Ríos Montt’s
presidency signaled a prophetic moment in Guatemala’s history (“la hora de Dios para Guatemala”) to the
army’s eventual renunciation of him as a “religious fanatic” in the coup that evicted Ríos Montt from power
on August 8, 1983. One could argue, however, that the evangelical aspects of his agenda and performance
had less durability than did his distinctive ideas for a reformed and redeemed Guatemala, based on personal
and public morality (de ned in narrow and Levitical terms), discipline, and national unity. Ríos Montt’s

template for reform was original, uncompromising, and unsullied by politics as usual.
An assessment of Ríos Montt’s own public discourse in early 1982 reveals that his objective was nothing less
than to bring salvation to a country plagued by war, corruption, and poverty and raise it to its destiny as the
City on the Hill, divinely blessed by God. Ríos Montt believed himself to be a prophetic leader, brought by
Providence to power at a particular moment in history in which he could lead the people of Guatemala
against the forces of evil that besieged them on every side. But, uniquely, the solution lay not in the
government, but in the hearts and minds of every Guatemalan. As a rising tide raises all boats, so the
redemption of many individuals would save the nation.
It was in his Sunday sermons that Ríos Montt explicated the moral roots of Guatemala’s many problems and
limned the outlines of his political and moral imaginaire. Although ridiculed both at home and abroad for
their preachy and even naive tone (earning the General the derisive nickname “Dios Montt”), the discursos
nonetheless bore an internally cohesive message that clearly laid out Ríos Montt’s diagnosis of the crisis
and his idiosyncratic vision for national redemption. In the General’s view, Guatemala su ered from three
fundamental problems: a national lack of responsibility and respect for authority, an absolute lack of
morality, and an inchoate sense of national identity. All other issues, from the economic crisis to what Ríos
Montt called the “subversion,” were merely symptoms of these three fundamental ills.
p. 65 La Familia Guatemalteca
In the Sunday discursos, the most pervasive theme by far was that of intrapersonal responsibility
(responsibilidad), a term that appears in every single address given between March and December 1982. Ríos
Montt demanded that each Guatemalan search his or her own soul and make a commitment to moral
responsibility at every level of social engagement: wives and husbands should be accountable one to
another, and to their children; citizens should take responsibility for the well‐being of their own towns and
communities and ultimately demand a relationship of mutual responsibility between the government and
the governed. “Your tranquility and your peace, the peace of Guatemala does not depend on arms,”
exhorted Ríos Montt. “The peace of Guatemala depends on you, señor, on you, señora, on you, niño, on you,
niña, yes, the peace of Guatemala is in your heart. As soon as you have peace in your heart, there will be
peace in your house, and when there is peace in your house, there will be peace in society. Your tranquility
32
and your peace, the peace of Guatemala does not depend on arms.” The recurrent altarcall for personal
transformation and both vertical and horizontal bonds of responsibility clearly re ect an embedded
Protestant discourse of personal salvation and the centrality of the individual. By Ríos Montt’s reckoning,
“you need order in the house…if there is order in the house, then there will be order in society; there will be
33
order in the State.”
But the house was not only disorderly; it also needed a thorough cleaning—the very image Ríos Montt used
in his rst Sunday sermon, titled, “We Have to Clean House” (“Tenemos que limpiar la casa”) in which he
34
inveighed against corruption and immorality as the source of the national crisis. In this discurso, Ríos
Montt rst made his case that Guatemala’s many ills were due to the moral failings of both its people and its
past governments. The nation’s economic poverty, he argued, had its roots in the national poverty of values,
especially rampant materialism and sel shness. While admitting that past governments had been corrupt
and wicked, he also urged Guatemalans to change their own attitudes and take some responsibility for the
country’s failings.
Within the internal logic of Ríos Montt’s diagnostic, Guatemala’s most urgent problems and their solutions
came from the same sources: personal morality and the family. “Poverty and ignorance are the fruits of
moral disorder, economics and injustice, of anarchy and oppression. Misery and ignorance are the fruits of
this family disequilibrium. Because of this it is important that the struggle against subversion, against

p. 66 ignorance and misery is a must, but it is not a monopoly of the state; it is also your own responsibility
35
and right.” In Ríos Montt’s vision, the twin velvet sts of amnesty and ethical reckoning were the means
through which La Nueva Guatemala could regain the moral high ground from the rebels. He was less
sanguine, however, as to the potential for the moral transformation of the leftist combatants themselves—
those who had “sold out their country” (vendido a su patria); for these, he had little expectation that they
would accept amnesty, since, as he explained, “neither communism nor fascism have any understanding of
36
the word ‘peace’ nor the concept of love.”
Ríos Montt’s demand for a national moral reckoning extended all the way to the conduct of everyday life at
the most elementary level: husbands should be faithful to their wives; children should obey their parents;
parents should keep their families at a size they could take care of; men should control their alcohol use or
37
“drink nothing stronger than te de rosa Jamaica [hibiscus tea].” He charged that La Nueva Guatemala
38
meant not only “changing or improving institutions, but changing and redeeming the hearts of men.” The
mandate was for both vertical and horizontal moral accountability, ranging from mother to child to the
governed and the government. Moral liability owed bilaterally from the individual to the state and back
again. In his view, a reformed society would result in a transformed government that would truly serve the
common good, an analogue to the repentant and reformed father of a redeemed family.
In the discursos, Ríos Montt used the archetype of the Old Testament patriarch to construct a narrative and
parabolic framework around which to interpret the nation’s three decades of civil war. The armed
resistance, in his view, was the direct result of the failure of parents to teach their children responsibility
and moral accountability and to revile communism. “The subversion has its roots in one’s own home,” he
explained. “The subversion starts in one’s own family.” Ríos Montt was willing to concede that the
guerrillas, “violent and corrupt” as he believed them to be, nevertheless were idealists in their own right, if
godless. In this respect, Ríos Montt was willing to recognize that the Left o ered a concept of belonging and
brotherhood to poor, disenfranchised campesinos that had provided a viable—if, in his view, fundamentally
deluded—alternative to the way of life under previous violent and corrupt governments; Ríos Montt’s
vision, by contrast, o ered a counterdiscourse to undercut the promises of the radical Left.
Given the all‐out assault in the countryside against the Marxist URNG and the general crisis in Central
America in the early 1980s, Ríos Montt remained surprisingly aloof from the Cold War discourse, at least in
the context of his public discursos del domingo. Although he met with U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1982
p. 67 and courted the United States for the restoration of military aid, in his domestic pronouncements Ríos
39
Montt tended to be more circumspect in his evocation of superpower alliances. Instead, he employed a
vocabulary of nationalism in which he repeatedly castigated “Washington and Moscow” as domineering
40
powers, corrupted by immorality and godlessness. Throughout his addresses, he rhetorically lumped
communism and fascism together as homologous adversaries of the state, di erentiating the two only to
catalogue those sins that he believed to be singular to the communists alone.
And “sins” they indeed were, at least by Ríos Montt’s diagnosis. He accused the “subversives” of
attempting to break up national values (quebrar los valores) and negate Guatemala’s Christian culture. The
armed resistance he equated with libertinism, criminality, anarchy, sel shness, deceitfulness, ingratitude,
41
and, most serious of all, disrespect for authority. In thus de ning the popular movement in terms of sin
and culpability, Ríos Montt simultaneously sought, rst, to recast the moral discourse of struggle in the
countryside and, second, to isolate and denature Guatemala’s popular movement by framing it all within a
generic evangelical paradigm of sinfulness and its theological counterpart, personal redemption.
On the other side of the equation, Ríos Montt also charged the state with irresponsibility and venality, and
he called on Guatemalans to demand responsibility from their own government, which in recent years had,
in his words, “planted the seeds of death, corruption, kidnapping, hatred, extortion, all acts of ingratitude
42
that have destroyed our own Guatemalan family.” In general terms, he directed his listeners to remember

that as taxpayers and citizens, the government was in their service, not the reverse; as one government
poster framed it, “Ese también es asunto tuyo” (This too is your concern). In particular, he laid culpability
for moral failing at the feet of corrupt police and government employees who had taken advantage of their
power to steal, lie, and abuse—sinful acts that had abrogated the government’s proper authority in the eyes
of the people and undermined the moral girding of the state. By extension, the problem of corruption and
immorality permeated Guatemalan society from the top down; the illegitimacy of the government was itself
a Platonian mirror re ection of individual sin, venality, and godlessness.
Thus, the solution to the grave problem of government illegitimacy and o cial corruption lay in individual
redemption. Ríos Montt demanded an immediate end to this corruption, requiring that all public o cials
pledge and adhere to a promise: “I don’t steal, I don’t lie, I don’t abuse [my authority].” This pledge, taken
like a wedding vow “before God, the Patria, and before one another,” was designed to bring about nothing
43
less than the “moral and social renovation of the nation.” But in his sermon of May 2, 1982, Ríos Montt
p. 68 cast this equation in distinctly covenantal terms: “God makes things as God commands, and what God
commands is a direct relationship, and work is a direct relationship. Patron, do not exploit; worker, do not
44
extort.…Change, change, all of you. Guatemala needs a change, to do the things that God has commanded.”
Here, the evangelical discourse is explicit, as he promised a direct covenant between God and man: those
who live by God’s laws help to prepare the way for the coming of the Kingdom.
The providential nature of the Ríos Montt agenda is a theme that runs openly through the early discursos,
45
broadcast between the March 23 coup and the end of the amnesty at the end of May 1982. Ríos Montt
described himself repeatedly as a divinely anointed leader: in his own words, “Dios me puso aquí” (God put
46
me here) (Figure 3.4). As the prophet visionary of this covenant, Ríos Montt regularly expressed the belief
that God had entrusted him with a unique responsibility to “convert power to justice.” In this respect, the
notion of justice laid the basis for Ríos Montt’s exercise of both political and military power. “The Bible
teaches us a concept of justice and the government has the responsibility to give justice to the people,” he
47
explained to an evangelical interviewer in 1983. But to the Guatemalan people, he marked out a clear
distinction between the exercise of power in the name of justice and brute force deployed out of vengeance.
The former was divinely sanctioned, evidence of blessing and salvation, the latter further proof of human
sin and wickedness. “I am not here to exercise vengeance,” he declared on March 29, 1982. “I am here to
teach justice, and we have to teach justice, and really the duty [quehacer] of justice implies a change of
48
attitude, of morality, a change of values.”
But even with this mandate, Ríos Montt preached that the ultimate responsibility for change lay within the
individual: “If there is not peace in the family, there is no peace in the world. If we want peace, we must rst
49
make peace within our hearts.” This model of personal reformation, however, in Ríos Montt’s vision was
much more than a moralistic paradigm for behavior; rather, it was the transformative basis of a speci c and
unique covenant with God. Within the framework of this covenant, the government would reform itself in
the meta‐image of the reformed, responsible individual, and God’s blessing would pour over a nation whose
people lived righteous and exemplary lives according to his will.
In applying this template of moral rectitude and responsibility to overwhelming national problems, Ríos
Montt attributed even Guatemala’s economic crisis—stemming from capital ight and a weak currency—to
a “crisis of values” that had its roots in the family, where middle‐ and upper‐class families embraced
50
p. 69 unbridled, amoral consumerism and poor families aspired, albeit unsuccessfully, to do the same. As he
de ned the problem, the fundamental moral failing was greed and its handmaidens, wanton materialism
51
and a “decadence of values” (decadéncia de valores). Compounding these sins were irresponsible parents
52
who failed to teach their children and grandchildren responsibility and self‐sacri ce. The warning about
sacri ce was well taken, since the occasion of this particular address would mark the beginning of the
government amnesty that served as the prelude to the Guatemalan army’s massive assault against the
highlands.

Figure 3.4.
“God put me here,” says Ríos Montt.” Prensa Libre, January 10, 1983.
The Amnesty Law and the Prodigalʼs Father
On May 28, 1982, Ríos Montt called a temporary halt to the army’s siege of the highlands and o ered a
53
thirty‐day general amnesty to the guerrillas and their supporters. The motive for the amnesty was as much
ideological as it was pragmatic, for its purpose was to recast the government as reconciliator and benevolent
authority. At the news conference in which he announced the decree, Ríos Montt urged insurgents to accept
amnesty and to be part of a “conquest of love,” in which they might “ ght not with violence, but with
54
understanding.” For Ríos Montt, the thirty‐day amnesty carried enormous moral signi cance. As a
symbolic gesture, the moral e cacy of the amnesty law was twofold: rst, it provided an opportunity for
the “prodigal sons” of the armed resistance to return themselves to their father’s house. At the same time,
p. 70 it o ered a moral rationale for a “just war” against those who did not. But in explaining the rationale for
the amnesty to the public in his discurso of June 20, 1982, Ríos Montt embedded his rhetoric in the language
of familial forgiveness: “What I want to say is…the amnesty wants to o er pardon…, it wants to pardon; the
fatherland wants to pardon; it is extending its arm; your embrace, your lap that your children return to;
homes await the presence of its members. We take advantage of the amnesty that wants to o er pardon. He
that pardons is noble and the person who accepts it is a noble person; we make our patria something noble.
55
We reconcile, we make our family the root of the country.”
As an act of social reconciliation, the amnesty law was an utter failure. O cial sources claimed that during
the month‐long amnesty 2,000 people, not surprisingly dubious of the government’s good faith,
nevertheless turned themselves in, although other estimates place the gure at fewer than 250, even
56
allowing for those who surrendered under coercion. But if Ríos Montt conceptualized the general amnesty
as a military and moral strategy, by those singular standards it was a success. For when the armed
resistance failed to take advantage of the amnesty o er, their reticence provided the army with the
justi cation—from a military view, even the obligation—to respond with una lucha sin cuartel, a ght
without quarter. Having o ered amnesty with “honesty and justice,” Ríos Montt turned his righteous wrath
upon those who spurned his overtures: “Listen well, Guatemalans. We are going to combat the subversion
by whatever means we want…totally just, but at the same time with energy and vigor.…We are prepared to
change Guatemala, we are prepared to do so with honesty and justice, peace and respect for those who are
peaceful and respect the law, [but] prison and death to those who plant [the seeds] of criminality, violence
57
and treachery.” This speech, which Ríos Montt o ered on June 30, 1982, marked the beginning of the most
ruthless phase of the war, a military campaign of counterinsurgency known o cially as Victoria 82 or, more

commonly, Fusiles y Frijoles—ri es and beans. The era of massacres had begun.
National Identity versus Ethnic Identity in the New Guatemala
It was during the Fusiles y Frijoles counterinsurgency campaign of the summer of 1982, the period of most
extreme violence committed in the name of counterinsurgency, that Ríos Montt announced the third
fundamental ill of Guatemalan society. This was that the country, broken up into “twenty‐two nations”—a
reference to the nation’s nearly two dozen indigenous languages—was lacking in any overarching sense of
p. 71 national identity or unity, consisting only of loosely articulated self‐serving individuals and parochial
ethnic clans. Re ecting both his own liberal heritage and the sentiments of the army high command, Ríos
Montt announced his desire to create una nacionalidad guatemalteca, the long‐standing pursuit of state
58
formation that had eluded the nation for the past 150 years.
That the General would reach this conclusion during a time when the army was aggressively trying to
consolidate its control over a disparate Mayan population that did not share a common language,
worldview, or patriotic sentiment with those in power in Guatemala City seems hardly coincidental. The
rst reference to the absence of an overarching sense of national unity (unidad nacional) appears in the
discurso of June 13, 1982, when Ríos Montt again attempted to broach the topic of government legitimacy,
which he rather sophistically suggested was embodied in the “armed institution as a moral symbol of the
59
unity of diversity.” But it was with much greater vehemence that he told his listeners, “We are simply a
60
Nation without identity; we don’t know our roots.…It is a very serious problem.”
This rhetoric had clear implications for the Maya, the subjects of what Miguel Angel Asturias had long
before described as Guatemala’s problema indio and who had, both historically and in the present, largely
61
declined to identify with the national project of a homogeneous, ladino, “Western” Guatemala. By the
1980s, this failure to subscribe to the national project carried, for the Guatemalan government, a strong
suspicion of subversion. It should come as no surprise, then, that Ríos Montt’s public rhetoric of national
unity clearly corresponds to the period in which the UN Truth Commission, the CEH, noted a change in
military strategy in which Mayans were marked as “internal enemies” and “collective enemies of the
62
state.” Chronologically, Ríos Montt’s rhetorical call for national unity coincides with the introduction of
aggressive counterinsurgency policies— rst the onslaught of major military action against Mayan
communities, followed by the establishment of “model villages” and “development poles”—resettlement
camps—and of civilian self‐defense civil patrols throughout the highlands—that also carried a highly
assimilationist subtext.
Fusiles
In this respect, the call for national unity provided a rhetorical rationale for what the CEH later described as
“massive and indiscriminate aggression directed against communities independent of their actual
involvement in the guerrilla movement and with a clear indi erence to their status as a non‐combatant
civilian population.” The excess and pervasiveness of the counterinsurgency campaign under Ríos Montt
p. 72 and their disproportionate impact on the Mayan population led the CEH to conclude that “the massacres,
scorched earth operations, forced disappearances and executions of Mayan authorities, leaders and spiritual
guides, were not only an attempt to destroy the social base of the guerrillas, but above all, to destroy the
63
cultural values that ensured cohesion and collective action in Mayan communities.”

Within this larger project of “domesticating” the indigenous population, Ríos Montt, with an eye to
constructing a New Maya for the New Guatemala, paid considerable lip service to the integrity of indigenous
culture and identity. This rhetorical focus on native cultures was intentional and served as a means of
constructing what Jennifer Schirmer has called the “sanctioned Maya”—a “tame,” denatured indigenous
64
population that posed no political, cultural, or ideological threat to the creation of the New Guatemala.
While the army killed and displaced literally tens of thousands of indigenous people in the countryside, Ríos
Montt went out of his way to attend festivities surrounding the Día de la Raza and other super cial
celebrations of a mythic Indian past. In his Sunday sermons, he o ered a stunning reversal of traditional
65
indigenista thinking by pointing to Indians as role models for hard work, service, and nonacquisitiveness.
To great public fanfare, he also appointed ten Mayan representatives to the Council of State. Despite these
gestures, the General made it abundantly clear that a national identity based on unity was one in which state
authority superseded all other provincial, ethnic, political, or even religious loyalties. The bywords of
national unity, debemos integrarnos (we must integrate ourselves), demanded the absolute price of
66
indigenous identity and autonomy.
Frijoles
The program of national unity intersected with the restoration of order and authority. One of the
cornerstones of the reclamation of the highlands was the establishment of model villages (resettlement
villages) and polos de desarrollo y servicios (development poles) in which citizens from the postmassacre
zones could live under government control (protección) and also be pumped for information about the
guerrillas or other intelligence. The polos de desarrollo, by explicit design, were an attempt to break the
infrastructural support for the guerrillas, as well as to reorient villagers toward supporting the
67
government. The government used the model villages—part strategic hamlet, part kibbutz—to resettle
villagers eeing the war zone or captured in internal exile into new communities.
p. 73 In these villages, refugees received housing and food and worked in a rigidly controlled, highly monitored
environment where rewards and punishment, language, entertainment, and spiritual lives were all
manipulated to disorient and reorient to make the inhabitants into loyal and grateful citizens of the New
Guatemala. The development poles were only slightly di erent in that each “pole” consisted of one or
(usually) more villages built on or near the site of a destroyed settlement; these too the army maintained
under vigilant eyes. In late 1982 the army began construction of the rst model villages, located in the
department of Huehuetenango and El Quiché, in the area known as the Ixil Triangle—the villages of Nebaj,
Chajul, and San Juan Cotzal—and slightly later, during the subsequent regime of General Oscar Mejía
Victores (1983–1985) went on to establish what would ultimately be twenty‐nine development poles
68
elsewhere in the Ixcán, in Alta Verapaz, and in the Petén.
While the o cial purpose of the model villages and development poles was to house campesinos who had
lost their homes and crops and to provide an additional measure of security and control in con icted
regions, the model villages also served as a mechanism for forced indigenous integration. Army authorities
intentionally mixed together refugees from di erent villages and linguistic groups and settled them in
con gurations that strongly discouraged the reestablishment of old community patterns. The army also co‐
opted some markers of indigenous identity (such as dress) for its own uses. (One army publicity photo
shows civil patrollers from an aldea somewhere in El Quiché ready for military review dressed in the
religious costumes of the cofradia of Santo Tomás from Chichicastenango, roughly equivalent to sending the
National Guard to battle in priests’ vestments. The photo’s caption reads: autoctonismo y seguridad—
69
roughly, “self‐identity and security.”
From the moment of their arrival, residents of the model villages received lessons in becoming ladinos.

They took courses in castillanización, and Spanish became the lingua franca. Refugees were treated to
anticommunist lms and lessons in patriotism, and engaged in pláticas ideológicas (ideological chats) with
70
tutors that the military provided. Army overseers prohibited the revival of traditional community ritual or
organization and instead introduced new events such as beauty pageants where young women were
crowned reina (queen) on traditional celebration days; children learned to sing new songs (in Spanish) such
71
as “Hymn of the Civil Patrol.” One exception to army control of social and cultural life was Protestant
churches, which formed freely in the model villages, a factor that in itself may account in part for the
p. 74 enormous increase in Protestant church growth, not only in the zones of con ict but all over rural
72
Guatemala during this period.
A Family United?
The notion of a nation cast adrift from its own history and its own heritage became a heavy rhetorical
drumbeat that pounded through the second six months of discursos, although on this critical issue Ríos
Montt seemed more con dent in identifying the problem than in explicating a solution. Clearly, the call for
a rehabilitated national identity and sense of purpose is in part motivated by criticism of his government
from within Guatemala and abroad, especially from the United States, which needed Guatemala to hold
democratic elections in order to justify the resumption of military aid. Yet Ríos Montt dismissed repeated
demands for elections from home and abroad with an o ‐handed, “Elections? What for?” (Elecciones—¿para
73
que?). In mid‐1982, when international monitors such as Americas Watch and Amnesty International
began to charge the Ríos Montt administration with massive human rights violations, the General shrugged
o their accusations with the statement that “our goal is not the United States, it is not Moscow…our goal is
Guatemala.…To produce peace and love, we have to look for peace and love within and not from outside, that
74
is where we look to solutions for the patria.”
Even within this nationalistic formula, however, the solution lay within the familiar template of family
values—but with a di erence. As the army accelerated its assault on the highlands, Ríos Montt began to
habitually address his listening audience as mi familia (my family), a metaphoric analogue for Guatemala as
a dysfunctional, but salvageable, family. Within La Nueva Guatemala, Ríos Montt would serve in the role of
pater potested, the all‐powerful father needed to discipline his unruly brood into obedience to his will, the
earthly parallel to an all‐powerful God who tests and disciplines those whom he loves.
La Hora de Dios para Guatemala
The reconciliation of the Guatemalan “family” had an urgency brought about not merely by the exigencies
of the struggle in the countryside, but also by Ríos Montt’s belief that he was leading his people into a
p. 75 prophetic moment in the nation’s history, what he called “an historic moment, a moment of national
75
awareness” and “a marvelous time!” Ríos Montt was not alone in this sense of destiny. His perception
re ected a prevailing zeitgeist among many members of Guatemala’s rapidly growing Protestant
population that the evangelical chief of state’s administration represented a crucial dispensational moment
—a kairos (Greek: critical, prophetic time)—in Christ’s unfolding plan. A vocal minority of Guatemalan

evangelicals, including the leadership of Verbo, the General’s own church, actively promoted the belief that
Ríos Montt’s presidency, coming as it did amid an unprecedented increase in Pentecostal conversion,
signaled the beginning of the ful llment of the biblical prophecy that would precipitate the Second Coming
76
of Christ.
The hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the rst permanent Protestant missionary to Guatemala, which
evangelical church organizations celebrated with great fanfare in October 1982, seemed to many to
77
highlight the prophetic portent of this historic moment. After months of planning, Protestants came into
the capital from all accessible parts of the country; approximately 300,000 convened in the Campo Martí (a
military parade ground in central Guatemala City) to pray, sing, and hear evangelical leaders, including
78
televangelist Luis Palau and Ríos Montt himself, pray and o er thanks for Guatemala’s redemption. As
one participant in the centennial celebration recalled, “As we sang, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ we
could almost visualize our heavenly home, we felt we were almost ying through the air toward a glorious
79
encounter with Christ Jesus.”
For certain sectors of the Guatemalan evangelical community, some of them foreign but many of them
local, Ríos Montt was emblematic of, though not directly responsible for, what they called “God’s hour for
Guatemala” (la hora de Dios para Guatemala), a movement based primarily in the Pentecostal sector, which
claimed a speci c blessing and prophetic destiny for the long‐troubled country. This was the “church
growth” movement (cleverly known as iglecrecimiento), a worldwide program designed to rapidly
evangelize (or “disciple”) nations where Protestantism had recently taken root, such as the Philippines and
Korea. Guatemala o ered a near‐perfect case study for what iglecrecimientistas called “dominion theology,”
for the unprecedented rate at which the Protestant population had expanded in the preceding decades. By
the early 1980s, Guatemala’s population was nearly 30 percent Protestant and still growing, making it the
most Protestant country in all of Spanish‐speaking Latin America. Evangelical church planners took this
unprecedented growth as a sign of God’s special benediction on a country long cursed by ignorance, sin, and
religious confusion.
Tapping into a deep vein of dispensational theology and millenarianism long present in Guatemalan
80
p. 76 Protestant theology, evangelicals considered this “ blessing”—the dramatic evangelical expansion—so
unique to the historical moment that it demanded immediate action by church planners. To this end, they
set the challenge to increase the number of evangelical churches, pastors, and converts so that Guatemala
81
would be at least 50 percent Protestant by the year 2000. Their hope was that “Guatemala as a nation
82
might be evangelized before the present generation passes into history.” That Guatemala was embroiled
in a grievous fratricidal war only o ered further evidence of Guatemala’s prophetic moment. As one
iglecrecimientista wrote, “The crisis of ethical and social order that we confront in this country is that of a
83
nation crying out in search of God.”
Ultimately, their project was not simply the conversion of souls, but to reach a point of critical mass at
which God’s blessing would pour over the nation and redeem it from its history, making Guatemala a
prophetic nation above all others. To iglecrecimientistas, the convergence of critical factors—the Ríos Montt
presidency, the apparently imminent defeat of the guerrillas, and the continued increase in the number of
converts across the country, combined with the timing of the Protestant centenary—was anything but
coincidence. Instead, these disparate events o ered clear evidence of what one leading iglecrecimientista,
84
Emilio Nuñez, called the coyuntura histórica (historic juncture) of God’s unfolding plan for Guatemala.
Early evangelical supporters of Ríos Montt outside of Guatemala included televangelist Pat Robertson, who
introduced Ríos Montt to the viewers of the 700 Club television show shortly after the coup. Robertson, an
avowed anticommunist, promised (but ultimately failed to deliver) “more than $1 billion” for the Ríos
85
Montt government just days after he came to power. Joseph Anfuso, Ríos Montt’s biographer, summarized
this view cogently in an article appearing in the evangelical journal Christian Life in September 1982.

“Without question,” he wrote, “an extraordinary opportunity now exists for the country of Guatemala to
become a shining light in the midst of the turbulent darkness of Latin America, a vibrant alternative to the
rising tide of Marxist‐Leninism in that region, and a glorious testimony to the reality and truth of Jesus
Christ.”
“We Have an Agreement between Guatemala and God”
While Ríos Montt never laid claim to actual messianic status for himself (indeed, he never o ered any
higher description of himself than “a servant of God”), his sense of his own prophetic role seemed to have
p. 77 been burnished by the iglecrecimientistas. To be sure, he had, from the beginning, conceptualized his role
as jefe de estado as an active agent of God’s will. As early as April 1982, he had pronounced the covenantal
relationship between God and the nation: “We rely on God, we rely on God…because He has given authority:
you and I and the Junta of Guatemala, the entire family [la familia completa].…Guatemala has a di erent
86
image.…We have an agreement [compromiso], between Guatemala and God” (emphasis mine).
By mid‐1982, however, the texts of the discursos reveal a slight but important shift in his perception of this
prophetic moment in history as Ríos Montt began to identify a unique covenantal relationship between a
loving but angry God and every Guatemalan. He explained, “God loves us, God loves Guatemala, God loves
you, and those whom he loves he disciplines, he loves and he smites [golpea], so that you wake up and react
and start to look for what truly matters, that you reconsider your importance, your humility, you reconcile
87
yourself with him, your creator, with your king, with your Lord.”
By building this theological framework around Guatemala’s su ering, even at the hands of the security
forces that he himself commanded, Ríos Montt was thus able to construct a comprehensible salvation
narrative: God tests those whom he loves. This narrative carried with it the powerful image of a loving yet
simultaneously angry God; as Eugenio Orellana, a Protestant dissident, noted, “[Ríos Montt] has found it
easier to apply the Old Testament law, summarized in ‘an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.’…He has not
88
wanted to, nor has he been able to apply the spirit of the New Testament to his government.” Yet for many
—and not just evangélicos—this narrative of divine judgment and salvation served to sacralize the nation’s
struggle, providing a metaphysical logic su cient to explain even the deepest su ering of the Guatemalan
people. The corollary of Ríos Montt’s salvation narrative was that under his “servanthood,” God would
reward his faithful people by inaugurating a new era of peace in which Guatemala would be transformed
into the City on the Hill, founded upon right living, faithfulness, and blessing. “We have to make a nation…
we have to make a nation but one that has its capital in your heart. We aren’t afraid, we don’t have to
compromise with anyone; we believe that God gives us the strength to rebuild Guatemala. I don’t rob, I
89
don’t lie, I don’t cheat, I am interested in serving Guatemala, and Guatemala is you and I am me.”
“Tenemos la Obligación de Hacer una Guatemala”
As Ríos Montt built the discourse of La Nueva Guatemala, it became clear that he was speaking of state
p. 78 formation, the creation of the “imagined community” of an allegiant populace that had preoccupied his
90
predecessors dating back to the Liberal Reforma of the 1870s. He persistently used the phrase hacer una
Guatemala (to make a Guatemala) as if no such entity existed at all, and perhaps given the political reality of
the day it, in fact, did not. His imagined Guatemala was one solidly based upon “responsibility” and “peace
91
and love,” replicating the qualities found in the ideal, prototypical nuclear family. He repeatedly stressed
the uniqueness of the Guatemalan experience, which, he explained, demanded extraordinary solutions that

could not be dictated by outsiders who could not possibly understand the realidad guatemalteca. Outsiders
did not, in Ríos Montt’s view, grasp the extent to which ethnic issues interfered with national unity—as he
explained to U.S. president Ronald Reagan during their visit in November 1982, “Guatemala is a di erent
kind of country, and we have to remember that we are 70 percent Indian, we have to live it and we have to
92
manifest it; if not, then the communists are going to destroy us.”
At the heart of this Guatemalan uniqueness was the inchoate nation, based on problematic Indian roots,
that still lacked de nition and direction. “Politics must face up to the land [encarnar la tierra] and our land is
Indian land, it’s our land and our nation, and our nation is Iberian, it is not European, it is not North
American, it is not Russian; we are Guatemalans,” he explained rather obliquely on July 18. “The world
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knows that Guatemala exists, but Guatemala will only exist if you want it to.” The task of state formation,
though divinely mandated, lay in the individual will of those who heeded the General’s words: “We are
going to make [hacer] Guatemala, we make Guatemala, we make it.…It will be grand, sovereign, and
independent and when we have the strength, the consistency, and our own dignity, we will be
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Guatemalans.”
By early August 1982, as the countryside became more “paci ed” and fell more solidly under government
control, the prophetic discourse became more abstract and the covenantal relationship more metaphysical,
as the General urged Guatemalans to “imagine” themselves a part of something that was too large to be
constrained by the limits of simple geography. “The dimensions of Guatemala are not its thousands of
square kilometers, but the fortitude of its heart, as exempli ed by that which you give in your own family,”
he explained. Elsewhere, he described the citizen’s relationship with the nation in something approaching
sacramental terms. In his words, this was: “A mystical attitude, a creative attitude, a national legitimacy
whose foundation is found in obeying the law, respect for justice, the veneration of the sacred, the
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p. 79 admiration of our past, faith in the truth, [and] pride in our culture.” Lest this demand for truth and
cultural pride strike an errant chord, Ríos Montt hastened to stress that the formation of a national identity
had a set of symbiotic needs and reciprocal responsibilities, because “when there is no unity, there is no
government; when there is no government, there is not a people [pueblo]; when there is no pueblo, there is
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no nation.” This social contract Ríos Montt envisaged as a simple pact, the implementation of which was
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entirely contingent upon the responsibility, morality, and good behavior of the governed. By the same
token, those who, by reason of their “irresponsibility” and “egoism,” failed to endorse the pact threatened
to abrogate the social contract, and to destroy the promise of the City on the Hill and to make a mockery of
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God’s promise to Guatemala.
One of Ríos Montt’s most de nitive addresses took place on August 21, 1982, in a discurso that coincided
with the esta patria, the Día de la Bandera (Flag Day). Ríos Montt chose the Día de Bandera, a highly
nationalistic holiday long associated with the army, to stress Guatemala’s unique place in history.
“Guatemala is a Nation that fears God,” he proclaimed, “that brings honor to America and that is serving as
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an example to the world, because Guatemala is you.”
On September 5, 1982, Ríos Montt delivered one of his harshest sermons, in which he laid the blame for
Guatemala’s miseries at the feet of ordinary citizens who had failed to heed his calls for rectitude and moral
reckoning, thus standing between Guatemala and its destiny. “What is the origin of our poverty?” he asked
rhetorically. “We do not have principles, our arcas are empty of principles, they are empty of human
values.…Between us there is poverty, our poorness of values, of respect and honor for others, a lack of
service, a lack of honesty, a lack of love, there is an ignorance. The poverty of our country is a poorness of
men; Guatemala lacks men who have integrity, decency, honesty, truthfulness, honor, manliness, a
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manliness that builds its base from something very simple, which is obeying the law.”

La Conquista de Amor
By the end of the rainy season in 1982, however, as the army’s heavy hand brought an enforced peace to
much of the countryside and the guerrillas, their forces dramatically diminished, shrank in retreat, Ríos
Montt reverted to a more conciliatory and disarming tone in his discursos. On October 3, 1982, he
p. 80 triumphantly announced that “the time of ri es has passed, the time of conquest and of bayonets has
passed. Now is the conquest of love [conquista de amor]. Our rules of the game are clear: truth, justice,
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humility.…Guatemala deserves the sacri ce of all.” The timing of this address coincided with the end of
Fusiles y Frijoles and marked the beginning of yet another alliterative dimension of Victoria 82 known as
Techo, Trabajo y Tortillas (roof, work, and tortillas). With the military reconquest of the highlands now a
foregone conclusion, this program was designed to complete the paci cation of the highlands and to
provide for their construction under the paternal hand of the government.
The call for sacri ce reinforced Ríos Montt’s concept of the covenantal and triangular relationship between
God, the government, and the governed. As before, his template for allegiance was based on the familial
model of the Holy Family, reinforced by mutual trust, love, respect, and fear of God. “We are de ning out
nationality in order to de ne ourselves,” he proclaimed. “Guatemala is a grand Nation, and I will explain to
you why: it is a great nation because of the excellence of its soul and because you, as man or as a woman,
know you must do right by your spouse and your children; that is something grand and powerful, it is
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powerful because you serve as the example: fear God and give to the Patria all your soul, all your love.”
As the army regained control of the countryside and instituted draconian programs for bringing the rural
population under government control, Ríos Montt began to place even greater emphasis in his discursos on
the “reinvention” of the nation. During the months of October and November 1982, he returned repeatedly
to the leitmotif that Guatemala as imaginaire, as a subject of allegiance and identity, did not, in his view, yet
exist. Much like Moses in the wilderness, he believed that his mission was not merely to lead his people to
the Promised Land, but to actually create that sacred political landscape, based on the biblical precepts he
extolled so regularly in his discursos. But the people, disobedient and slow to learn, continued to be seduced
by the twin gold calves of subversion on the one hand and excessive materialism on the other. “No hemos
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aprendida a ser Guatemala” (We have not learned to be Guatemala), he concluded.
The Ouster of Ríos Montt
General Efraín Ríos Montt fell from power in a coup on August 8, 1983, which put into o ce General Oscar
Humberto Mejia Víctores, Ríos Montt’s own minister of defense, and Guatemala’s last military president
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p. 81 before the return of civilian government in 1986. The public rhetoric of the August 8 coup addressed
the religious issue head on, leaving the clear implication that Ríos Montt was, at best, a religious zealot. The
Mejia government issued a statement to the press on the day of the coup that called Ríos Montt and his
advisors from the Church of the Word part of “a fanatical and aggressive religious group which took
advantage of their position of power as the highest members of government for their bene t, ignoring the

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fundamental principle of the separation of Church and State.”
The real reasons behind the coup, of course, had little, if anything, to do with religion; the army high
command had not been seized with a sudden paroxysm of Catholicism. The evangelical discourse of the Ríos
Montt administration notwithstanding, no one from the Church of the Word outside of the president and his
two advisors had held any pivotal position in government, nor had any other high‐ranking military o cer
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been an evangelical Christian. At the heart of the matter was the fact that with the insurgency in the
countryside beaten into submission, few others in positions of power shared Ríos Montt’s idiosyncratic
vision of La Nueva Guatemala, and even his closest supporters within the military had come to believe that
Ríos Montt had turned into something of a liability. Ríos Montt still enjoyed considerable support among
the urban middle class, who valued the sense of personal security they felt under the pax riosmonttista, and
we have already observed the paradoxical respect he enjoyed in rural areas that had been deeply a ected by
the violence, where people re exively credited him with restoring order and authority.
But in the higher circles, once the urgency of national crisis had passed, Ríos Montt wore thin very quickly.
His cavalier dismissal of demands for new presidential elections and his insistence that he governed as a
servant of the people anointed by God to restore order and authority did little to endear him to senior
o cers and in uential right‐wing political parties, which came to regard him as capricious and
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unpredictable. But most unforgivable of all was Ríos Montt’s inability to rebuild the economy, where two
key commodities, co ee production and tourism, were so damaged by the war that by the end of 1982 the
gross domestic product dropped to an unprecedented low growth rate of 3.3 percent. As one analyst noted,
“Businessmen might be willing to sit still while moralizing Ríos Montt admonished them to give up their
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mistresses, but when the GDP fell…there was cause for grave concern.”
In terms of the religious rationalization for the coup, the only substantive complaint that the golpistas had
regarding Ríos Montt’s religion seems to have been their profound opposition to his moralistic, church‐
p. 82 inspired anticorruption campaign, which had severely stanched the ow of graft to military o cers and
government o cials. By one account, one of the soldiers muttered to Ríos Montt as he escorted him out of
the National Palace during the coup, “A government that doesn’t abuse doesn’t govern.” (El gobierno que no
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abusa no gobierna.)
Conclusion
Is it possible to reconcile the lofty morality of Ríos Montt’s discursos del domingo with the unspeakable
human rights atrocities committed against the Guatemalan people under his leadership? How could the
“conquest of love” result in the slaughter of so many? It is not enough to explain away Ríos Montt as a
religious fanatic, as his fellow o cers did when they removed him from o ce on August 8, 1983. As we have
seen, his religious discourse was, in many respects, clearly contradictory to the prosecution of the military
campaign, but the military’s successes under his administration were unprecedented in Guatemala’s
modern history. Had the Cold War remained the primary lens of historical analysis, Ríos Montt might well

be remembered as a visionary statesman instead of an author of crimes against humanity.
In theoretical terms, on the other hand, we can easily write o Ríos Montt’s political‐religious vision for
Guatemala as little more than an imaginative but calculated rhetoric that was deftly calibrated to increase
public support for the increased repression and stigmatization of problematic social subjects (rebels and
Indians). There is good reason to take such a view. In her work on the revolutionary imagination, María
Jose na Saldaña‐Portillo suggests that we should not be surprised when power deftly utilizes religious
language and imagery, devoid of ethics or genuine religious content, to advance its own interests—such,
she suggests, is the colonial condition. She writes that the “double displacement of Christian ethic from the
religious to the philosophical, from the philosophical to the State, reveals the double logic of colonial
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violence—benevolence and instrumentality.” These ideas—benevolence and instrumentality—though
perhaps not necessarily in that order, are perhaps as good as any to describe Ríos Montt’s vision of La Nueva
Guatemala.
Yet while Saldaña‐Portillo’s theory helps us to unpack the paradox inherent in the “conquest of love,” it is
also important to double back and reexamine the appeal that Ríos Montt once held for many Guatemalans.
During his seventeen months in o ce and for years afterward he enjoyed popularity with a national
constituency that far exceeded the normal political life span of an ordinary ousted demagogue. This is true
p. 83 even in the context of a country inexperienced in democracy, where a population may vote as much from
fear and manipulation as from conviction; as James Scott reminds us, one should not mistake what he calls
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the “‘peace of repression’ (remembered and/or anticipated) [with] the peace of consent or complicity.”
While Gramsci might speak of Ríos Montt’s Guatemala as a place where people were “enslaved at the level
of ideas,” one can also make the case that Ríos Montt’s appeal was less a matter of people enslaved by ideas
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than of people engaged by them. Part of this, of course, stems from precisely what Scott describes above
—the long war had left Guatemalans with so few expectations or choices that even their political
imaginations were weary.
But at the same time, it is important to remember that for many Guatemalans, Ríos Montt’s Nueva
Guatemala was not empty rhetoric. Both in his discursos and in the conduct of the counterinsurgency war (in
very di erent ways), Ríos Montt confected a richly symbolic universe, couched in evangelical language, that
was genuinely new in the sense that it represented something beyond the world the politiqueros—the
generals and planters and corrupt politicians—had imposed upon Guatemala in the past. This symbolic
universe, a new ideal, replete with rewards, punishments, clear‐cut codes of conduct, and rich with
promises, was, of course, the New Guatemala.
Within this symbolic universe, Ríos Montt’s New Guatemala was built upon three fundamental principles.
These, freely blending a kind of Pentecostalized liberalism with Cold War strategic interests, included (1)
salvation, (2) judgment, and (3) righteousness, each of which represented a speci c strategy of political
behavior and motivation. Salvation came through the amnesty, the “frijoles” side of Victoria 82, and the
construction of polos de desarrollo. Here, the government rewarded the “faithful” with highly coveted social
goods, including safety, security, and basic material needs. The second, judgment, was the darkest and
perhaps the most elemental principle of the Ríos Montt regime, in that it provided the necessary “moral
justi cation” for the Plan Victoria 82, including the massacres and the systematic e ort to destroy Mayan
culture, the “ t punishment” for a wayward people seduced by the godless allures of communism and
rebellion.
Finally, the most illusive principle, that of righteousness, lay at the very center of Ríos Montt’s vision for a
new Guatemala: a modern, prosperous and peaceful nation, blessed by God, in full covenant with its
grateful, peaceful, and obedient citizens. Although such a formula lies entirely outside the political
discourse of liberal, democratic society—where criteria such as civil liberty, equal representation, and
human rights continue to make up the units of measure—it nonetheless held great appeal for many

Guatemalans, where the simplicity, clarity, and chilling certainty of Ríos Montt’s words provided a coherent
narrative to support the military counterinsurgency project. Even as the army’s paci cation program used
p. 84 terror as its basic strategy, the General himself seemed to embody law, order, security, and discipline in
what seemed at that historical moment to be either an anarchic society or one poised on the brink of
perdition. That the General failed to accomplish this nal objective before he left o ce may explain, at least
in part, why Ríos Montt refused to depart from the political arena for more than two decades after his ouster
from o ce, after constitutional amendments and a return to democracy had rendered both his vision and
his methods obsolete.
The heart of the Ríos Montt paradox lies in the singularity of the General’s vision for a New Guatemala, his
new ideal, as revealed here in his discursos del domingo. His use of language and images was, arguably,
nearly as e ective a weapon of counterinsurgency as the military campaign, especially among the urban
middle class and ladinos. Pierre Bourdieu would speak of this as an additional form of symbolic violence, as
deployed in a setting such as this, where, in Bourdieu’s words, “language…is exercised from a position of
power such that it is able to produce a mode of perception that is in accordance with the interests of
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power.” Within this mode of perception, Ríos Montt’s civil‐religious ideal was as precise and
comprehensible as the teachings of his evangelical church: repent, live right, and be saved—but for those
who refuse the path of righteousness, the consequences were as inexorable as the Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.
Against a backdrop of genocide and ruthless brutality, Ríos Montt, paradoxically, seemed to those who
admired him to o er an idiosyncratic promise of hope, security and self‐respect, and a nal solution to an
armed con ict that had roiled the country for more than two decades. This is not to say that Ríos Montt’s
vision repudiated the “bipolar nationalism” that had come before, but simply that he re ned, advanced, and
resigni ed the older liberal, republican ideology. By his astute appropriation and inversion of symbols,
language, and meaning, Ríos Montt managed to engineer not only consent but even enthusiasm for the
state’s ideological reconquest of its people.
Notes
1. Angel Anibal Guevara, a general and member of the PID, Lucas's hand-picked successor, won the presidency in patently
rigged elections in 1982. In a show of strained partnership, young o icers in the army who did not like the way the Lucas
regime was conducting the counterinsurgency war joined forces with the Christian Democrats and the MLN to prevent
Guevara from taking o ice.
2. Joseph Anfuso and David Sczepanski, He Gives—He Takes Away. The True Story of Guatemala's Controversial Former
President Efraín Ríos Montt (Eureka, CA: Radiance Press, 1983), p. 20. This is more readily available in its Spanish version,
which uses the title Servidor o Dictador? (Guatemala: Gospel Outreach, 1984).
3. Kobrak, Huehuetenango.
4. NSA, “Analysis of Ríos Montt Government a er 11 Months,” classified report, February 1983, document #901.
5. Anfuso and Sczepanski, He Gives—He Takes Away, pp. 28–31. These details di er slightly from some of Ríos Montt's
biographies (some sources, for example, say that there were only eleven children in the family, although this probably
does not count the older son who died in childhood). The details here, however, come from a biography of Ríos Montt that
was sponsored in part by Verbo Church in 1984 and which he personally vetted, so I am assuming that these basic
biographical details are correct.
6. Efraín's younger brother, Mario Enrique, became a priest and was consecrated bishop in 1974.
7. Several sources claim that Ríos Montt was a graduate of the School of the Americas, but neither the o icial Lista de
Oficiales Militares nor SOA Watch's list for Guatemala, nor Ríos Montt's own CV include this as part of his biography. At
least one source states that he studied at the School of the Americas in 1950, the year a er he graduated from the Escuela
Politécnica, but this would put him at SOA during the heart of the Arévalo-Arbenz period, which begs the intriguing
question: did Guatemala's democratic government of the 1950s also send its o icers to train at the SOA (or rather, one of
its predecessor institutions)? The same source suggests that Ríos Montt was one of the “young o icers” who supported
Carlos Castillo Armas in the overthrow of Arbenz, a charge that is thus far unsubstantiated. See Je rey St. Clair, “Back to

the Future: The Return of General Ríos Montt,” July 13, 2003, http://www.countercurrents.org/gua-stclair170703.htm. Ríos
Montt did indeed study as a young man at Fort Gulick, which predated the School of the Americas. For more on the School
of the Americas, and specifically its training of the Guatemalan o icer corps, see Lesley Gill, Military Training and Political
Violence in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); and David M. Lauderback, “The U.S. Army School of the
Americas Mission and Policy during the Cold War,” PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 2004.
8. Curriculum Vitae de General Ríos Montt, appendix to “Mensaje del Presidente Ríos Montt a La Prensa Internacional, 1982”
(photocopy).
9. One source sympathetic to the guerrillas claims that the campesinos at Sansirisay were indigenous, although this does
not seem very likely in El Progreso, but the episode does seem to o er a foreshadowing of events to come. See Jacobo
Vargas Foronda, “Guatemala: Ríos Montt, la evangelización del exterminio y una introducción a la regionalización de la
guerra de contrainsurgencia en Centroamérica,” paper delivered July 24, 1982, Universidad de Guadalajara (photocopy,
CIRMA). Curiously, the REMHI report does not include Sansirisay in its list of massacres.
10. Secretariado de la Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Directorio de la Provencia Eclesiástica de Guatemala, 1992–1994
(Guatemala: Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, 1994), p. 45.
11. The three parties that made up the UNO coalition included the Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca (DCG), Frente Unido
de la Revolución (FUR), and the Partido Revolucionaria Auténtico (PRA), all centralist, populist parties. Ríos Montt, Mi
defensa, p. 15.
12. For a detailed journalistic account of the 1974 coup, see Soto Rosales, El sueño encadenado, pp. 69–81.
13. Peter Calvert, Guatemala: A Nation in Turmoil, p. 85; Gyl Catherine Wadge, “The Ríos Montt Regime: Change and Continuity
in Guatemalan Politics,” master's thesis, Tulane University, 1987, p. 43.
14. Pentecostalism is the variation of Christianity that places primary emphasis on the experience of God though the “baptism
of the Holy Spirit” as expressed through miraculous occurrences, such as faith healing, speaking in tongues, and ecstatic
behavior. The vast majority of Guatemalan Protestants today are Pentecostal, as is Ríos Montt himself.
15. For a detailed explication of these factors, please see my Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1998).
16. “Neo-Pentecostalism” refers to a religious current that grew out of the charismatic movement of the 1960s rather than the
Azusa Street Revival in 1906 and the earlier Holiness movement. Neo-Pentecostalism o en stresses “prosperity theology,”
which refers to the notion that God rewards the faithful with material prosperity. Neo-Pentecostalism took root in
Guatemala in the late 1970s, and, unlike traditional Pentecostalism, tended to attract a middle- and upper-class
membership. Ríos Montt's church, the original Iglesia Cristiana El Verbo, which then met in a tent-shaped building
(reflecting its earthquake-relief origins) in wealthy Zone Nine, was one of the largest and most prominent neo-Pentecostal
churches in Guatemala in the early 1980s.
17. Time, May 5, 1982, p. 30.
18. Statement to the press from Iglesia Cristiana Verbo, August 10, 1983.
19. Deborah Huntington, “God's Saving Plan,” NACLA, 18, no. 11 (1983): 26.
20. NSA, U.S. Department of Defense confidential internal cable briefing to Joint Chiefs of Sta , March 1982, document #0078.
21. NSA, “Confidential Memo to Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Sta ,” March 1982, document #0079.
22. Interview with Jorge Serrano Elías, February 11, 1985, Guatemala City.
23. Victor Gálvez Borrell, Transición y régimen político en Guatemala, 1982–1988 (San José, Costa Rica: Facultad
Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, 1991), p. 29.
24. I am indebted to the work of Alejandra Batres Grenados, whose work in an unpublished paper titled, “Morality, Order, and
Unity: The Experience of Ríos Montt in Guatemala” (December 1994), was an early influence on this chapter.
25. See “El pecado original que el general Ríos Montt no ha podido lavar,” Crónica, July 20–26, 1990, p. 15.
26. REMHI classifies a massacre as any event in which five or more people are intentionally killed at the same time.
27. Patrick Bell, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert F. Spirer, “Terror and Regime, figure 6.4” in State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996:
A Quantitative Reflection, http://hrdata.aaas.org/ciidh/qr/english/chap6.html.
28. Anonymous interview with author, Santa Cruz del Quiché, October 1984.
29. Anfuso and Sczepanski, He Gives—He Takes Away, p. 122; interview with Jorge Serrano Elías.
30. “Ningún asesinado a tiros hoy,” El Imparcial, March 27, 1982, p. 1.
31. In using the word imaginaire I am referencing the work of French scholars such as Serge Gruzinski who, broadly speaking,
use the word to mean a common universe of understanding and belonging in much the same way that Benedict Anderson
uses the phrase “imagined community.” Although many people translate imaginaire as “imaginary,” I find the use of this
English adjective in place of the French noun to be misleading, giving a sense more of “imaginary” as in “delusional,”
rather than imaginaire, as in “of the imagination.”
32. “Tenemos que llevar a cabo reconciliación,” April 11, 1982. Mensajes del presidente de la república, General José Efraín Ríos
Montt (Guatemala, Tipografía Nacional, 1982) (hereina er cited as MPR). This publication consists of the unedited

verbatim transcripts of Ríos Montt's discursos del domingo.
33. “Tenemos que llevar a cabo reconciliación,” MPR, April 11, 1982.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. “Ríos Montt señala causas que mantienen el empobrecimiento en que esta el país,” “Ríos Montt se califica as mismo,
mayordomo del pueblo,” El Imparcial, August 9, 1982, p. 1; “Ahora o nunca, para un cambio en Guatemala, dijo Ríos
Montt,” El Imparcial, May 10, 1982, p. 1; “5 militares combaten los focos de subversión, dijo Ríos Montt,” El Imparcial, July
19, 1982, p. 1.
38. Anfuso and Sczenpanski, He Gives—He Takes Away, p. 153.
39. “Guatemalan President's News Conference in Honduras,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, December 7, 1982.
40. “Ahora o nunca salvemos a Guatemala,” MPR, April 25, 1982.
41. Ibid.; “Consolidar la familiar, consolidar la sociedad,” MPR, April 30, 1982.
42. “No estoy aquí para ejercer venganza,” MPR, March 29, 1982.
43. “Este Gobierno tiene el compromiso de cambiar,” Gobierno de Guatemala, Press booklet, no date, p. 7.
44. “Hacer las cosas como Dios manda,” MPR, May 2, 1982.
45. The notion of a covenantal relationship between the Guatemalan government and the populace does not originate with
Ríos Montt. See Douglass Sullivan-Gonzales Power, Piety and Politics: The Role of Religion in the Formation of the
Guatemalan Nation State, 1821–1871 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) for a good discussion of related
issues during the nineteenth century.
46. “Se que Dios me puso aquí, dice el presidente Ríos Montt,” Prensa Libre, January 10, 1983, p. 4.
47. “Ríos Montt Says Guatemala Needs Pastors, Not Troops,” Charisma, May 1984.
48. “No estoy aquí para ejercer venganza,” MPR, May 29, 1982.
49. Ibid.
50. “Estamos en una crisis de valores,” MPR, May 23, 1982.
51. “Diagnóstico en una crisis de valores,” MPR, May 30 [June 13], 1982.
52. Ibid.
53. This was the first of two amnesties o ered by the Ríos Montt government. The second amnesty went into e ect March 22,
1983, to commemorate the first anniversary of the March 23, 1982, coup. “Decreto Ley #27–83,” Secretaría de Relaciones
Publica de la Presidencia de la República.
54. “Guatemalan Amnesty,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 25, 1982.
55. “No queremos prensa subordinada al estado,” MPR, June 20, 1982.
56. Central America Report recorded that 237 guerrilla sympathizers and only three combatants surrendered under the
amnesty. See “War of Words as Hundreds Die,” Central America Report, June 25, 1982, p. 191; “1857 subversivos se
acogieron a la Amnistía,” El Imparcial, July 1, 1982.
57. “Estamos dispuestos a que reina al honestidad y la justicia,” MPR, June 30, 1982.
58. “Ríos Montt anuncia cambios de Ministros,” El Imparcial, May 21, 1982, p. 1.
59. “Diagnóstico sobre Guatemala,” MPR, May 30 [June 13], 1982.
60. Ibid.
61. Miguel Angel Asturias, El problema social del indio y otros textos (Paris: Centre de Recherches de l'Institut d'Études
Hispaniques, 1971 [1923]).
62. CEH, “Conclusions,” in Guatemala: Memory of Silence, http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc1.html.
63. Ibid.
64. See Schirmer, “Psychological Warfare, Social Intelligence, and the Sanctioned Maya,” in The Guatemalan Military Project,
pp. 103–124.
65. “Triple cimera centroamericana aquí,” El Imparcial, December 6, 1982, p. 1; Raul Villatoro, “Vamos a cambiar todo, dijo
Ríos Montt,” El Imparcial, April 27, 1982, p. 1.
66. Simon, Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny, p. 121.
67. See Cesar Sereseres in Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project, p. 58.
68. The locations of the model villages were, Ixil Triangle: Acul, Tzalbal, Juil-Chacalté, Palay, Ojo de Agua; Chacaj,
Huehuetenango; Playa Grande (El Quiché): Cantabal, Xaclbal, Trinitaria, San Pablo, San José “La 20,” Efrata, Playa Grande
Uspantán, El Quiché, Playa Grande (Alta Verapaz), Salacuín and “aldeas fronterizas”; Chisec, Alta Verapaz, Setzí, Sesajal,
Saguachil, Sesuchaj, Carolina, Las Palmas, Semococh, Santa Maria, Yalihux (Senahú, Alta Verapaz); El Petén: Yanahí.
Ejército de Guatemala, Polos de Desarrollo: Filosofía desarrollista (Guatemala: Impresa en Editorial del Ejército, 1984), p.
72.
69. Ibid., p. 43.

70. Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project, p. 111.
71. Ibid.
72. Washington O ice on Latin America, Security and Development Conditions in the Guatemalan Highlands (Washington, DC:
WOLA, Report on Mission of Inquiry, 1984), p. 39.
73. “El 23 de marzo exalta el concepto patrio,” MPR, July 18, 1982.
74. “Estamos dispuestos a que reina la honestidad y la justicia,” MPR, June 30, 1982.
75. “Tu y yo tenemos que cambiar,” MPR, July 4, 1982; and “El 23 de marzo exalta el concepto patrio,” MPR, July 18, 1982.
76. See SEPAL, La Hora de Dios para Guatemala (Editoriales Sepal: Guatemala City, 1983).
77. Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, pp. 157–158.
78. Interview with Virgilio Zapata Areceyuz, January 25, 1985, Guatemala City.
79. Paul E. Pretiz, “Two Views on Ríos Montt,” Latin American Evangelist, July–September 1983, p. 14.
80. Dispensationalists believe that human history is divided into di erent (usually seven) epochs, or “dispensations.” In each,
God interacts with and reveals himself to humanity in di erent ways. For dispensationalists, biblical exegesis is only
possible through understanding which dispensation a passage refers to (Karla Ann Koll, “Presbyterian Evangelicals in
Guatemala: Status Quo or Subversion?” Unpublished paper presented at LASA, Dallas, Texas, 2003, p. 3, n. 5). Koll also
notes that Central American Mission (CAM), one of the earliest and most pervasive missions to Guatemala in the
nineteenth century, introduced dispensationalism to the country, and that dispensationalism continues to be the
dominant theological paradigm undergirding Guatemalan Protestantism even today.
81. In fact, they fell far short of this goal. A CID-Gallup poll conducted in November 2001 found Guatemala to be 30 percent
Protestant, 55 percent Catholic, and 13 percent “other.” “Statistics on Religious A iliation in the Americas, Plus Spain and
Portugal,” http://www.prolades.com/.
82. SEPAL, La Hora de Dios para Guatemala, p. 8.
83. Galo E. Vasquez, “Por amor a Guatemala,” in ibid., pp. 5–28.
84. Emilio Nuñez, “A toda la nación,” in ibid., p. 28.
85. “Aid for Guatemala,” The Christian Century, May 1982, p. 688.
86. “Tenemos que llevar a cabo la reconciliación,” MPR, April 11, 1982.
87. “Dios nos hizo para manejar esta tierra,” MPR, September 26, 1982.
88. Pretiz, “Two Views on Rios Montt,” p. 14.
89. “Tu y yo tenemos que cambiar,” MPR, July 4, 1982.
90. See Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, pp. 1–20. The concept of the imagined community is, of course,
borrowed from Benedict Anderson.
91. “Estamos dispuestos de que reina la honestidad y la justicia,” MPR, June 30, 1982.
92. “Ahora que se acercan las festividades de Navidad,” MPR, December 12, 1982.
94. Ibid., “El mundo sepa que existe Guatemala, pero Guatemala existiera si usted quiere entenderlo.”
95. “Compromiso con nosotros mismos,” MPR, November 21, 1982.
97. “Guatemala tiene un pacto con usted,” MPR, October 3, 1982.
98. “Falta el sentido de la responsabilidad,” MPR, November 7, 1982.
99. “Consciencia de la nacionalidad,” MPR, [August 21] August 22, 1982.
100. “Robustecer la consciencia nacional,” MPR, September 5, 1982.
101. “Guatemala merece el sacrificio de todos,” MPR, October 3, 1982.
102. “Consciencia de la nacionalidad,” MPR, [August 21] August 22, 1982.
103. “No hemos aprendida ser Guatemala,” MPR, October 31, 1982.
104. Calvert, Guatemala: A Nation in Turmoil, p. 113.
105. “Motivos del golpe: abusos de un grupo de religiosos, fanático, y agresivo,” La Razón, August 9, 1983; “Golpe contra la
secta ʻEl Verboʼ y la corrupción,” La Razón, August 9, 1983.
106. The president of the Council of State, Jorge Serrano Elías, was a fellow evangelical who by most accounts won the 1991
presidential elections on Ríos Montt's coattails, but at the time Serrano belonged to Elim Church, which had notoriously
hostile relations with the Church of the Word. See James Jankowiak, “Guatemalan President, Two Aides Return to Ministry
a er Coup,” International Love Li Newsletter, 8, no. 8 (1983): 1–4.
107. “No habrá elecciones en el '84,” El Imparcial, May 9, 1982, p. 1.
108. Stan Persky, In America: The Last Domino (Canada: New Star Books, 1984), p. 326.
109. Interview with Harris Whitbeck, Guatemala City, February 18, 1985.
110. María Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2003), pp. 64–65.

111. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 40.
112. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), quoted in ibid., p. 39.
113. Pierre Bourdieu, quoted in Nieves Gómez Dupuis, Informe sobre el daño a la salud mental derivado de la masacre de Plan
de Sanchez, para la Corte Interamericana de derechos humanos/ Report about the Mental Health Damage from the
Massacre of Plan de Sanchez, for the Inter-American Commission (Guatemala: F&G Editores, 2005), pp. 31–32.

3 Ríos Montt and The New Guatemala

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Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala Under General Efrain Rios Montt, 1982-1983

3 3 Ríos Montt and the New Guatemala 

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https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379648.003.0003 Pages 53–84

“Himno Nacional de Guatemala” (“Guatemala Feliz”) (Fragment)

…Es tu enseña pedazo de cielo

en que prende una nube su albura,

y ¡ay de aquel que con ciega locura,

sus colores pretenda manchar!

Pues tus hijos valientes y altivos,

que veneran la paz cual presea,

nunca esquivan la ruda pelea

Libre al viento tu hermosa bandera

a vencer o a morir llamará;

que tu pueblo con ánima era

antes muerto que esclavo sera.…

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si de enden su tierra y su hogar,

que es tan solo el honor su alma idea

y el altar de la Patria su altar…

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The General Is Born Again

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Background to the Coup of March 23, 1982

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La Mano Dura and the War of Counterinsurgency

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“La Nueva Guatemala Es Paz y Desarrollo”

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The Amnesty Law and the Prodigalʼs Father

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National Identity versus Ethnic Identity in the New Guatemala

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“We Have an Agreement between Guatemala and God”

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